


Models

by hellkitty



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-03
Updated: 2014-02-03
Packaged: 2018-01-11 01:48:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1167174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellkitty/pseuds/hellkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Warning: References to Arcee's canon history so, uh, nonconsensual gender reassignment.  <br/>For tf-rare-pairing Three Part Harmony Challenge, set late-war, pre-Chaos.  <br/>Character A: Arcee<br/>Character B: Rung<br/>Setting: In a spaceport bar<br/>Prompt Lyrics: <br/>But if you stick around you might find me complicated, I'm difficult at times but I'm worth it, really worth it (Love is a question mark, Taboo OST)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Models

Rung boosted himself up onto the stool in the Zel’l system transfer hub’s main bar, clutching the packet of transfer papers.  It had been a long day of travel, and several more cycles on the next shuttle.  But right now, all he wanted to do was have a drink of some mixed engex and engine oil, and stretch his small legs. 

He’d been warned that non-Cybertronians weren’t welcome in some systems so he’d stayed on the main concourse, near the boarding ramps.  They might give him some looks, but nothing worse than that, and the server who brought over the fizzing beaker of his drink seemed more curious than anything else. Then again, Rung didn’t exactly look like the scourge of the galaxy. 

“Whoa, hey there.” A shadow fell over his shoulder, taller than he was, and he startled, straightening up on his stool, turning to face…Arcee.  Of course he knew who she was, what she looked like. He’d been briefed on Kimia, when Banzaitron attacked and Jetfire and Fortress Maximus had set her free. They’d asked for his assessment, and then filed it away without reading it.  “Didn’t expect to run into another of our kind out here,” she said, hooking a stool with her ankle, drawing it close, and sitting down across the table. 

Well.  Rung blinked, feeling distinctly unarmed. Then again, he wasn’t Jhiaxus, so maybe he was safe.  Maybe.  He pushed his drink toward her in a gesture that was probably more ‘please don’t kill me’ than sheer hospitality. “I was just passing through.”  His fingers tapped the packet, nervously.

“Funny, so are we.”

“We?” As in plural?

“Hardhead and me. Just staying long enough to restock.”  She took his drink with a flourish, her other hand beckoning the server over for another round.  “He’s out scrounging some parts right now,” she added, airily, in a way that made Rung suspect that the scrounging might not be, well, entirely aboveboard. 

He wasn’t going to ask. It wasn’t his job and this wasn’t Cybertronian space, after all.  “So,” he said, keeping his tone light, conversational. “You have your own ship?”

“Yeah.” Arcee flashed a smile at him. “Pretty sure the Autobots aren’t exactly going to sign off on requisitions for me.”

True enough.  The last time he’d seen her name, it was on a BOLO/Apprehend order.  Right, you’re a professional, Rung, ask some questions.  “You are doing well, at least?”  Three whole kliks and she hadn’t tried to kill anyone yet.  Progress, yes? 

“I guess.” She nodded at the server, who put down another round of drinks in front of them, pausing to slug back the rest of the first one, to hand it back to the server, licking her lips. 

“You seem…less hostile than before.” 

“Seem.” She almost winked at him.  “Let’s just say, after a while you figure that anything you do isn’t going to change what is.” She looked down at her pink frame, back up, shrugging. 

“Anger can be…unproductive,” Rung said, diplomatically, taking the new drink.

“Sometimes it’s all you’ve got,” Arcee gave a sage nod. 

“You’ve got more than that,” and he felt on track again, his smooth therapist’s voice clicking on.

She fixed him with a look. “Rung, aren’t you? The psychoanalyst.” 

Her look was hard, hooded. Not outwardly hostile, but suppressing it, swathing it carefully. 

“Yes.”  So much for the therapist’s voice. That was the clear squeak of alarm.

She laughed, but it was a predator’s laugh, designed to be unsettling, the sign that who she was confronting was no threat at all. “As long as you don’t try to sell me that scrap about life being what you make it.” She jabbed a finger at her chassis. “’Cause I didn’t make this.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”  But still, his professional pride was a little bruised, and he had to make a stand. Rung dug in his storage, pulling out a datapad.  “Can I show you something, instead?”

She leaned over. “Sure, Rungsten.” She gave another wink, this one almost as unsettling.  “What you got.” 

He couldn’t shake the feeling that she was acting, playing a rough and crude character for him. But why?  Maybe he’d get an answer. But obviously, not through the direct route. He cycled through the menu, pulling up a hologram of one of his little ship models. “What’s this?”

“Ark-3,” she said, looking up, expecting some trick. “A model of it,” she added, just in case. 

Rung nodded. “You could also look at it and say it’s a hologram. Or a series of pieces of colored plastic. Or a toy.  Or, to me, a reminder of some very much loved friends.”  His voice sounded wistful. It was true: he missed those times before the war, when space missions were about exploration and discovery instead of conquest. 

“What’s your point?”

“It is just a thing. Neither good nor bad, except how we interpret it, what value we give it.  If you owned this and lost it, you might be upset about how many shanix you lost. I…would be devastated.”

“For losing a bunch of plastic. That you could buy at any model shop.” 

He didn’t want to point out that there…really weren’t any model shops anymore.  She knew that. That wasn’t the point.  “Yes. And maybe that makes me weak, or vulnerable, or something.”  He could almost hear Impactor scoffing: the only things Impactor found value in could be measured in caliber and kill radius.  “But it’s mine, and it’s me, and what I value.”

She looked at the model, then back up at him. “All right, no more fancy talk. What are you trying to say.”

No more fancy talk? All right. His hands scrolled through his other model pictures, the dioramas he’d set up for them once recorded in the datapad.  The little models were now in a storage cube, being transferred to his new ship, the dioramas gone, space he couldn’t afford to transport or keep, so he took what comfort he could from pictures, simulated reality, moments of the past brought into three dimensions. 

“The biggest freedom we have is to choose what we will invest ourselves in, and who, or what, we give our power to.” He took a sip of his drink.

“Nothing,” she said. “I believe in nothing.”

“That’s…an option, I guess. But it seems cold and lonely, to have nothing that gives you strength and meaning and stability.” He looked up. “Let’s face it. In war, sometimes it feels like our own history is tearing us apart.  Things—even silly things like this—provide an anchor for us, to remember who we really are.” 

She looked at the slowly scrolling images, her mouth working, almost envious.  “I got Jhiaxus.”

“Or Jhiaxus had you.” He looked up, meeting her gaze. “Because these things own us, just as much.” 

“He did this to me,” she said, and her voice dropped to a hiss, and he could see the anger, still there, a burning ember behind her optic lenses. 

“He did.” No denying it. And it was awful in ways that Rung couldn’t even imagine; he had to stifle his curiosity, wanting to ask.   “And when I move, when I relocate, I drag all my ship models with me. I choose to. Your choice?”

“I don’t have a choice. I’m not a…a thing!”

“You’re not.”  She was angry, but still talking: always productive.  “You’ve been his victim for so long, Arcee. You’ve arranged your whole existence around him.  Is that what you want?”

Her mouth worked, because she’d learned this lesson already, in her own way, and he couldn’t help but think it must have been painful for her, the empty satisfaction of rage and destruction. 

“All I’m saying,” Rung said, clicking off his datapad, “Is that our lives…they’re stories. Stories anchored by people and things, but stories, evolving and changing all the time.  They’re not done being written till…well, far after we are done living.”  History, he knew, kept rewriting itself.  “We can choose our role. You can be a victim, or a hero.”

She scowled, for a klik, as though what he’d said was too simple, too ridiculous for her to countenance, and then her face changed, rippling like silk over water, and she clutched at her engex beaker for a long moment, staring into its depths.  “I’m no hero.”

“That’s your choice…for right now,” he said, gently.  She could be: she had the strength of will, conviction, determination to be a hero, a legend.  If she wanted. If.

“Heyo! Arcee!”  A voice from the bar’s doorway, a large, blocky shape silhouetted in the bright lights of the concourse behind him. “Think it’s time to didi.”

Her face took a moment to compose itself back in that almost cocky expression again. “On it!” She boosted off the stool. “My ride’s here and apparently we’re running hot.” Rung didn’t have to be a master of thieves’ cant to know that meant there was stealing involved.  “Thanks for the drink, Rungor.”

“…Rung,” he said, faintly, as she moved away. 

Then she stopped, turning back to him, and for a moment he had the wild thought that she was going to backhand him for the correction. He lifted the datapad up, over his narrow chest, like a shield as she loomed closer, face inches from his, and he squeezed his optics shut, bracing for the hit.

Her lips, instead, soft as satin, gliding over his, and the whiff of her engine oil, the flick of her glossa, serpentine and teasing, before she pulled away. “Who said ‘hero’ was my only other choice?” she said, her blue optics winking, for sure this time, and Rung sat, tingling with a sudden heat, as she walked away.


End file.
